


A Delightful Being

by Lilliburlero



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Attempted Abortion, Character Death, Corpses, Don't Have to Know Canon, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Pre-Canon, Sex Work, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 14:26:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1269823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Which it is an account of why James Dillon spilt his port when Stephen Maturin mentioned the sin-eater (<i>Master and Commander</i>, ch.6)</p><p>*</p><p>Written to reconditarmonia's request for something concerning one of the more seldom-visited A-M characters.</p><p>*</p><p>I think this one can probably be read as original historical RPF; no canon knowledge necessary.</p><p>*</p><p>Content advisory: a moderately graphic account of a heart attack resulting in death, mention of human remains and putrefaction of same.  Some homophobic and sexist language and attitudes. Mentions of attempted abortion, attempted suicide, prostitution, alcoholism, violent death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Delightful Being

**Author's Note:**

  * For [reconditarmonia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/gifts).



> The title is taken from Stephen Maturin's description of Dillon in his youth.
> 
> It will be observed that this fic has a James Problem; its major characters all having that given name, and being sufficiently intimate, often, to think of one another by it. I was reluctant from the start to rename James Gandon the younger simply because he did not contrive to populate Dublin with big white buildings, and as he developed as a character it became impossible. I hope I have found a tolerable solution, but if you are confused: 'James' in narration is always James Dillon, whom James Gandon the younger sometimes addresses in dialogue as 'Jamy'. I've given James Gandon the younger the nickname 'Jim', by which Dillon sometimes addresses him; his father addresses him as 'James'. An unadorned 'Mr Gandon' is always the elder; 'Gandon' may be either, but where they appear in a scene together I have I think always managed to indicate which is which. All as clear as mud? Good!

 

It is passing strange to hear a masculine voice raised in the  _caoine_. The  _gol_ , that is, the  refrain, is a different thing, for all the mourners to join.But the  _caoine_ , as to say the  solo, is a woman’s part. O’Sullivan makes no effort to moderate his bass-baritone for the occasion, fortunately perhaps.He claims descent from the poet Eoghan Ruadh, whom I believe had no  _legitimate_ issue.There are several Irish Sophies but he is the only Munsterman aboard, and ( _eheu_ ) the only one with Irish. Had JD any of that language? I cannot remember, and now I shall never know.

―National Library of Ireland, Maturin papers, box 12, MS 45/683

*

1791

James disliked Dublin, an illbred, discommodious town. It had none of the pristine grace of his native Munster; it was hardly like Ireland at all.He gazed across the river at the new Custom House, finished but as yet unopened.He could wish the patron less of a boor: Beresford was a pushy, corrupt man. But none could wish the proportions more harmonious. The Portland stone glowed in the afternoon light of a glorious May day.

‘It is unquestionably the finest Custom House this side of Adam and Eve's. No, quite seriously, Gandon, your father’s designs and your company are the only things that make this city bearable.’

‘Thank you, Dillon.I shall take it as a reflexion on the family name, though there are bearers of it who’d curse your omissions.Since you came to stay, Nell and Lizzy have discoursed on nothing but the great merits of the senior service and red hair―they don’t say _red_ ―what is their word―auburn! Sweet Auburn, loveliest village on the plain!―’

‘We are brothers enough, aren’t we, without my appearing in the character of an adventurer who would carry away a young woman of good family and fortune and he nothing to offer her but a lieutenant’s half-pay?’

‘And two thousand acres of Kerry!’

‘Not a quarter so much, my dear, and not until July.’

‘Oh―is the climacteric so soon? I had forgot it,’ Gandon teased, linking his friend’s arm.‘Come, we dine with Mr Hone this evening―the portraitist, you know.He keeps a capital table.Have you met Captain Grose?’

‘Grose the antiquary? I have heard your father speak of him.As a boy I drank up the panoramas in his _Antiquities_.’

‘The same.He is something of a panorama himself, by name, by nature, you know.But a very learned fellow, and an excellent talker.He is my father’s most particular friend. We will reconcile you to Dublin society yet.’

‘Grose is an Englishman, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, as am I, and my esteemed parent.And Hone too.So Dublin must be very charming, that we all four of us relinquish England for it. There, it is proved.’

‘No, Jim, I mean it. It gives me pain that Ireland seems unable to breed her own men of talent, and must import them.' 

‘Nonsense.D’you know Barrington? Tearing fellow.I never know if he means half he says, but he is an uncommon wit.You feel him anatomising you as you speak―’

Dillon knew and liked Jonah Barrington, but thought he scarcely amounted to a renaissance.

‘―I say,’ Gandon continued, ‘that reminds me of another man.A medical student, Huguenot name, like my own―not Saurin, no. It’ll come to me.Well, quite apart from the medicine, he is a positive prodigy of a natural philosopher.Ill-looking, very small, with the most extraordinary eyes, so pale a grey as to be nearly colourless, and damned sensitive―why, I made some trifling remark about the barbarity of surgeons, a pleasantry, you know, and he took it as a slight, asked me to withdraw it, would you believe.Which I did, of course―

James successfully fought the impulse to disengage his arm.

‘―it being in no such sort―oh, Jamy, why the vinegar face? Is it the toothache again?The clove oil not doing its stuff?But what was I saying? Yes, the country _teems_ with men of parts―it is just that you have been at sea so long, and haven’t met them yet.’  

* 

Eleanor Gandon’s evident partiality for him was to James a source of great discomfort.The mild solution of cool good looks and strong concentrate of warm good sense that he found so disarming in her brother was in its feminine iteration wholly unattractive to him; and his want of ease expressed itself in an uncharacteristic diffidence, which, he was all too aware, could easily be mistaken for reciprocal feeling.She would be foolish to have many hopes―a lieutenant late the third of the _Leopard_ not being a creature of much independence or potency on the point of private life, for all his approaching majority would make him tolerably rich―but it hurt him to take refuge in his shipless circumstances.  

However, Horace Hone’s comfortable house on Dame Street was full of conversation-pieces, his kitchen distinguished by a refugee French cook, his guests well-assorted people of unpretentious taste: among the company were Hone’s wife, the Gandons, the painter Packe and his wife, the host’s brother Camillus, also a draughtsman, his sister Mrs Metcalfe, her cousin Mrs Connolly and her husband, a clergyman.And then there was Captain Grose.

Gandon’s description of him as a panorama was scarce an exaggeration. He filled the drawing room side to side.He was below the middle height, and enormously corpulent: he must weigh twenty stone or more, James judged.He wore his own grey, tousled hair, little powdered, in a short queue; his brow was high and noble, his brown eyes large and rather filmy, his nose long and upturned.His complexion was uncommonly fine; high-coloured, as you might expect, for such a fat man on a warm day, but flawless, hardly a pore visible.His lips were full and deeply curved into a bow; his expression one of complete and confident cheer, quite without the self-conscious jocosity which frequently afflicts those of portly frame.His clothes were the shabbiest of the party, and excessively outmoded: it could not be inexpensive to clothe that bulk, and Captain Grose was accounted a poor manager of money.But he was a fine manager of men.In his company the elder Mr Gandon’s round, small-featured face lost its reserved, birdlike look and became debonair with pleasure.Their minute, unconscious gestures of attachment were delightful to behold, and yet their mutual society excluded no-one―they were the very template of friendship, and their mood infected the party.  

Mr Hone asked James if he would sit for a miniature. 

‘I fear I should not repay your efforts, sir.’

Hone laughed.‘Were I paid in your good looks, Mr Dillon, considerable as they are, we should be dining on thin air and Liffey water. But there is at least one to whom they are meat and drink, or I should not be commissioned.’

Dillon glanced at young Gandon, seated beside Mrs Metcalfe, and saw a callow satisfaction light his face: the tyro patron.Hone gave Dillon a curious smile, for both Eleanor and Elizabeth Gandon sat quite at the other end of the table.

Over dinner, Captain Grose entertained the party with his abundant stock of anecdote, and for those who had not read it in the _Edinburgh Magazine_ , he recited in quite tolerable Scotch Mr Burns’s latest, which drew much praise for its gothic humours matched to mischievous wit, the coffins ‘like open presses’ being singled out as the very perfection of this uncanny alliance.Grose had time barely to take a mouthful between speeches; James, used to keeping naval hours and eating hungrily despite his raging tooth, wondered how such a loquacious man had ever contrived to grow so fat.He must creep to the pantry at midnight and gorge.  

When the ladies had withdrawn, Grose engaged him, as the one of only two Irishmen at table (and the other a lifelong inmate of the Pale) on the antiquities and speech of the country.James soon realised he was at a severe disadvantage on point of information, but Grose’s manner was frank and humorous enough to put him entirely at his ease.In temperament he resembled a sailor more than a soldier, James thought, adept at the small social graces that proximity necessitates.

‘Oh, very few, sir―I would think perhaps half-a-dozen loan words have entered English from the Erse, and fully five of them are cant and jargon unspeakable. Some years ago, when the Surrey militia dug its infernal crooks into me, I noted that the private soldiers had adopted a curious phrase― _hit the road_ ―’ (he clapped his plump, powerful hands―dirty nails)―‘to signify _depart_ , you see, and upon enquiry I found it was an exact translation from the Gaelic.But none of the Irishmen knew his letters, so I was at a sad pass to record how it is written down.’

‘ _Buail an bóthar_!’ Dillon exclaimed, ‘But I’m afraid I can’t help you. I heard much Irish spoken when I was a boy.But I think I never saw any written.’ 

‘Woe to the language whose speakers are unlettered, sir.’

Struck by this remark, James fell silent for a moment.But Grose’s cheerfulness soon broke in, enquiring of the MacCarthy Mór and of the poetess whose husband was so lawlessly slain by one calling himself sheriff―it was a disgrace―and did she live? of the poetry of Owen Roe.James owned himself sadly ignorant of it all, except the doggerel verse in praise of Admiral Rodney had reached his embarrassed ear as a national reflexion.

Grose’s hand feinted toward James’s.

‘What ish my Nation? Who talks of my Nation?’ he said in the vilest approximation of a brogue James had ever heard.

‘Look you,’ he replied, grinning broadly with burgundy and new-minted affection, ‘if you take the matter otherwise than is meant...’

‘Ah, I believe Mr Hone is indicating―’That bossy, inhospitable English fashion, James thought crossly. 

Grose stood, and promptly sat down again with a sigh.‘Excuse me, gentlemen, I’m sadly indisposed. I shall follow in a moment.’  

Old Gandon called for a restorative―Grose sipped and declared himself recovered sufficiently to go to the drawing room, but on attempting to stand, he fell on his hands and knees, dragging tablecloth and delft with him.  He puked black bile. Jim Gandon sent a servant to fetch Hone and dithered stupidly, as if he were about to follow; his father was on the floor beside his friend, his arm about him.  Grose heaved once or twice, as if he had just been instructed how to draw breath, and was at a loss to master the arcane art of it.  Then he keeled into old Gandon’s lap, knocking him on his back, and vomited a gout of dark blood.  Young Gandon screamed thinly.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake―Jim, here, help me roll him over.’They freed a winded, pale, eerily silent Gandon.Grose’s eyes were fixed, and his breath had stopped.James cut away his stock, waistcoat and shirtfront with his penknife; tried to listen for a heartbeat, but it was tricky in such an obese subject.There was no pulse at his wrist or neck.

Dillon sat back on his heels.‘I’m sorry.I’m no physician, but I’ve seen enough dead men.’He felt a curious impulse to giggle: the scene was oddly cramped; for all the drama of it, they had moved only a few feet from the table.They looked like butchers; their hands covered in, and their faces and clothes dotted with blood.Mr Gandon’s wig was awry and splattered with mess, of which blood was probably the least offensive component.Grose’s body lay beside the tumble of cloth and tableware, looking almost like a composition, a personification of disorder.There was a moment of absolute stillness; then the corpse groaned monstrously: a mere release of air.

Jim actually did laugh, weakly, hysterically; his father sat heavily on a dining chair and wheezed, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands.It took Dillon a long moment to recognise that he was weeping.

Hone, his wife and two servants appeared in the doorway.Dillon stood up.‘I’m sorry, Mr Hone. Captain Grose is dead.’ 

An orphan before he was three years of age, James had nonetheless known few deaths outside the line of service, and none that touched him, so he observed with curiosity, then irritation, the little civilian pantomime that accompanied the news of a demise, the gasp; in the more sensible subjects, a sketch of a stagger; the platitudes.The magistrate lived just three doors down, so word was sent, but it was a simple matter that could largely be dealt with on the morrow: cause of death, apoplectical seizure.Clearing a cold pantry and removing two and a half hundredweight of dead antiquary to it, less so, but it was accomplished before midnight under the good guidance of Mrs Hone.  

Old Mr Gandon stood staring at the sheeted bulk on the trestle.‘Hone―I―I thank you.Mrs Hone.’ He bowed. ‘But I don’t think I can leave him.’

‘Well, of course, sir, it’s been a shock. Why don’t you take supper with us tonight, and we’ll have Bet turn you out a chamber.I’m sure young Mr Gandon and Mr Dillon are quite capable of seeing the young ladies home.’ 

Gandon seemed at first inclined politely to decline. ‘No―I wouldn’t like to―trouble―’Tears overtook his courtesy.‘I don’t think I can leave him.I can’t leave him.’Jim put a hand on his father’s shoulder, trying to ease him away gently.Gandon shook it off roughly, wiping his tears and smearing more blood and filth across his face.‘I can’t leave him. You can’t take him from me.You mustn’t take him from me.’

It was a mild enough eccentricity, after all: a comfortable chair and stool were brought, some blankets, wine and a little plain supper, a bowl of warm water for Gandon to wash his soiled hands and face, and he prepared to sit his vigil.

The young men took a silent, subdued carriage home with the Misses Gandon; neither lady was given to flights of sentiment, and they, like Jim, had known Grose all their lives, as a charming and generous avuncular figure.Dillon felt himself an intruder, not just upon their grief but upon their youth, their inexperience.He expected to have to suppress crass self-satisfaction at his more intimate conversance with mortality, but he did not―instead he felt weary and sullied.He wished he had never seen a man crushed by a loose gun or transfixed at the neck by a splinter thicker than a sword.He wished he had never killed anyone.

Elizabeth and Eleanor retired without supper; Jim directed that his should be sent to his rooms.Dillon, though longing for solitude, could hardly refuse an invitation to share the repast, so, he washed, changed his clothes, and joined his friend in the study-sitting-room adjoining his bedroom.

Jim shuffled through some sketches: a plan of Newgrange, with some artefacts found there, Dromohaire Abbey, St Canice’s Cathedral.

‘These were for the _Antiquities_ ―I suppose they are useless now.How melancholy it is, Dillon; it feels like someone has come along and scraped me out here.’He touched his belly just below the breastbone.

‘I’m so sorry, Jim.’

‘It was to be expected. He was at least three score, and I think in indifferent health―he used to say he was too stout to ride, and too poor to engage a carriage, so he had much exercise of his limbs―but the apoplexy troubled him greatly. Nonetheless, he was one of those men who intimates immortality, you know? I am worried for Father above all.’

James tried to keep his gaze steady and neutral over the brandy glass.

‘You know my mother died last year?’ Gandon went on, ‘in truth, I did not feel it.I had seen her very seldom since we came to Dublin.’

‘When was that?’

‘Oh, more than ten years ago; I was eight years old.I missed her very greatly at first, though she was not a warm woman, not at all.’

‘Well, a child of that age will, whatever his mother’s character.It must have given _her_ great pain to be separated from children so young.’

‘Oh, I don’t know.She had still our eldest sister, Mary Anne.Molly was ever her favourite.’Gandon spoke oddly without bitterness. 

‘Oh―but surely―' 

‘She was―not so very honest, Jamy.Father kept that from us, out of kindness.I think Nell suspects it. Lizzy still does not know.’

‘I’m sorry to hear it, joy, very sorry.’James wondered how many times he had made empty apology this evening. ‘But I wonder that he let your sister stay; would your mother’s infamy not have ruined her prospects?’ 

‘I think a person with a commonplace mind might say Mother was provoked. Father felt guilty, and that is why Molly remained, but there was no infamy in _his_ love.’

Dillon felt both disinclined and avid to hear more, and his stock of impersonal regret was running low. 

‘Well, no indeed.I wonder that anyone would suspect him of the least impropriety.’

‘Oh, really, Jamy,’ Gandon’s voice was expressionless.‘I would’ve thought that you of all people might understand the construction put on my father’s connexion with Captain Grose.’

James thought of Gandon’s anecdote about the little medical student who would have called him out over a schoolboy pun; it seemed half a decade ago he had heard it, in a different world.He adopted a dispassionate, glassy tone, appropriate for dealing with Englishmen who didn’t have the wit to know they were giving offence. ‘It’s a frequent misconception of the service―in fact there is neither more nor less unnatural vice among us than in other walks of life.’ 

‘I didn’t mean your blessed Navy, my dear.I meant you.’

It is said that carnal desire is induced by the sight of death; Dillon thought that made hypothetical sense, a brutish instinct for maintenance of population, and that for roughly the same reason, the impulse was not to be found in him.He was now proved wrong in rather exhilarating style.Gandon was accomplished beyond his nineteen years―James supposed it might be tactless to remark that _this_ was what his friend had found to do with his ample leisure, for he had no profession and no seeming intention of acquiring one, but the tension between them had relaxed somewhat, so he said it anyway.Gandon simply laughed and tugged at the black ribbon that still just about held James’s disordered hair in a club. And then he gasped, suddenly serious again, for the red―the _auburn_ ―cataract that fell around James’s small, proudly-held head, onto straight, strong shoulders, over the soft hollows behind his collarbones revealed by an open shirt―was _beautiful_.  

‘I wish Hone could paint you like this―I want you looking like this always.’

‘No, honey, you must hold it in your memory, not in watercolour and ivory. Remember _me_.’

*

Mr Gandon returned to his house on Mecklenburgh St next afternoon with the body, which was washed and laid out in a north-facing room, the coolest of those suitable. Then began the task of writing to Grose’s many friends: his nephew, Daniel Grose, an officer in the Royal Irish Artillery, was by good fortune presently stationed at Dublin Castle, and offered what service he could in the interstices of his duties.  It was arranged that Grose should be buried in a plot in Drumcondra churchyard, purchased by Gandon a few years before with a mind to his own use, and the date of the obsequies set for five days’ time.Grose’s wife was nearly twenty years dead, but they had together ten children, scattered about the globe (his eldest son being governor of New South Wales), none of whom could be notified in time to see him interred; however, there were many in Dublin who had a claim to mourn this well-loved man.Though it would  be a unostentatious affair, the preparations occasioned considerable bustle. But there was also a sense of queasy sobriety; it both was and was not a house of mourning, and its inmates, high and low, were somewhat at a loss as to proper form.

Old Gandon had recovered his dignity, but at the cost of all his cheer.  If he wept, he did so after retiring, which he did generally before sunset.His speech and conscious movements now had a calculated quality, all spontaneity gone, while the unconscious ones became alarmingly automatic.  His maddening habit of whistling between his teeth―it was ‘Lilliburlero’, Dillon noted, stripped of accent, only changes in pitch remaining―became compulsive.  Dillon refused to consider his dislike of even tuneful whistling as maritime superstition, but the sound chilled him, and he found it hard to share morning- or drawing-room with his host for long.  

His son’s grief, meanwhile, took the form of perilous, hysterical levity. James’s face warmed to a couple of memories, but especially Miss Gandon’s enquiry as to where her brother had been in the hours before dinner―had they not planned to take a turn around Rutland Square?

‘Oh Nellie, I quite forgot―Mr Dillon was teaching me to―’ he smiled winningly,  ‘to tie knots.’

This was no less than the truth, and the only substantial contribution James could make to his friend’s education.  Gandon plucked a length of wool from his sister’s work-box and demonstrated on the arm of a stray Hepplewhite carver a hitch that James had seen him tie just about an hour before, in rather more constrained circumstances.

‘I’m sure Miss Gandon couldn’t possibly be interested―’

‘Oh, but I am―what’s that one for, Mr Dillon?’

‘Mooring a boat, um, chiefly; you see, it’s stable, but easily undone―’

Jim snorted.  ‘Not unlike you, then, Dillon.’

'―when you want to cast off,’ James finished weakly and shot him a livid glance.  The next time they were alone together, he thought of mentioning it―any encouragement of Eleanor’s tender but hopeless feelings verged on cruelty, and an honest mind could not but have mistaken _undone_ ―but that would be to stoop, which he chose to do only literally, and that posture quickly rendered verbal remonstration impossible.

* 

The elder Mr Gandon turned from his desk, held out his hand for the letter that his visitor clutched.  He read it, a brief statement from Daniel Grose confirming him as one Thomas Cocking, draughtsman, servant to his late uncle.  The man’s head was quite spherical, his hair plastered so close to it that he appeared to be wearing a cap of glossy black tar that extended down his back in a long dribble.  His face was pale, his eyes bulbous and a very deep shade of blue, his mouth small, thin and red, like something neatly ruled out in a ledger.  His ears and nose were the size of an infant’s, most disconcerting once noticed, for, though of middling height and rather thin than plump, he was large of frame, with massive hands and feet.  His clothes, like his late master’s, were of a fashion thirty summers out of date.

‘So you are Cocking. I have heard much of you. I am sorry I should finally see you in melancholy circumstances.’

His voice was breathy, rather deep for a creature of such puerile appearance.  ‘As am I, sir. I was very devoted to the Captain, sir.’

‘I thought you had left his service?’

‘I will never do that, sir―I mean, I hope I may continue to serve his memory.  But I had lately done much work for Mr Hooper, the bookseller.  But when Captain Grose declared an intention to make the _Antiquities of Ireland_ , I longed to accompany him, and Mr Hooper gave me leave, sir.’

‘And how came you not in Dublin when―when―on Thursday evening?’

‘I was completing some work at Slane, sir. I arrived this morning, and Captain Grose was not at the place we had appointed, which was so far out of character for him that I made inquiries. By good chance a man told me that Lieutenant Grose was stationed at the Castle, and he sent me here, sir.’ 

‘Well, Cocking, have you a lodging?’

‘Not in Dublin, no sir.’

‘You will wish to attend your late master’s funeral.  It is tomorrow.  You may stay here tonight.  My housekeeper will accommodate you with some of the upper servants.’  He rang for Mrs Crumlin.

‘And if it please you, sir, there is one more thing―’

*

A well- (some would say _over-_ ) developed sense of honour and a touchy notion of virility having prevented him from seizing the very great majority of the opportunities that came his way at sea, James had acquired fewer amatory arts than he would have liked.  With Jim Gandon, he felt neither of these unfortunately converging inhibitions. Gandon was a gentleman, and a more civilian one could not be imagined, so there was no constraint of rank in any sense.  Gandon had a knack to represent surrender as generosity, which freed James to indulge his sometimes urgent need for it without injury to his pride.  His avidity for action and naval sense of dispatch, however, pleased Gandon’s more indolent temperament rather less.

‘You know, my pretty kinchin cock,’ Gandon said, firmly intercepting James’s eager hand, ‘sometimes it really doesn’t matter if one loses a minute.There is always another one along directly.’

‘Yes, but by then it’s the _wrong_ one. I can’t imagine how you can fail to see that.And don’t call me cant names.’  

‘You liked cant names just half an hour ago.’

‘That’s my point, _exactly_.’

‘You’re jaded, Jamy.I know just the excursion for you.’

‘I hardly think your father would approve you appearing in public, for all it’s not _mourning_ ―’

‘Who said anything about public? A kind of club―an association―’

‘You’re not taking me to some goddamned molly-house, Jim.I won’t stand for it.’

‘That would be a refreshing novelty, to see you less than upstanding―but I fear I don’t believe it―' Gandon released James's hand and dropped his own, eventuating simultaneously a yearning groan and a furious frown. 'No, don’t be absurd―you know that sort of thing is no more my style than yours.  This is a rather _philosophical_ little society, which meets in a different private house each Tuesday.  You’ll find it very agreeable.  Now, if you’ll excuse me―if we’re to have discreet ingress on our return, I have an arrangement to make with the footmen―oh, for heaven’s sake, James, that glower is quite unnecessary, as well as unbecoming.  I might kiss the rod on occasion, but I don’t touch the staff.’  

It is a commonplace to say that fateful occasions rarely seem portentous at the time of their happening.That night James Dillon met men who would alter the course of his life, to whose causes and affairs he would devote himself passionately, whom he would regret, to the last beat of his heart, ever having seen.But he had no sense of change in himself, no forming, shaping or overturning of his yet unsettled opinions, not even that he had enjoyed a conversation of particular moment. 

It was one of those gatherings which have probably occurred at every time and place where mankind has contrived to organize himself into social units larger than a few thousand people, representing the convergence of people who for reasons quite distinct and sometimes incompatible, feel at odds―intellectually, politically, in matters of religious devotion or simple physical need―with the main run of society in which they dwell.  Distinctions belonging to that outer society still obtained, but they were blurred by an inchoate sense of solidarity, of comradeship in unconventionality.  To those whom it was congenial, it was immediately so; as when well-travelled people arrive in a distant country where they have no connexions and but little knowledge of language and customs, yet know themselves at home.

Dillon had learned, somewhat bitterly, that a tendency to hasty judgement was incompatible with success at cards (though he liked the mathematics of it) so he rarely played, but the company drifting to and fro from the tables was various and engaging.He spoke to lawyers, army officers, and physicians, the first sons of linen factors and ironmongers and the fifth sons of dukes.Gandon, meanwhile, had found himself a rather exquisite creature upon whose conversation and talents he seemed anxious to solicit Dillon’s approbation; James overcame his reservations concerning the soil of trade to offer it wholeheartedly.

But the party was not the dissolute sort that continues beyond dawn; at about two it was breaking up, and they left.The walled garden gate had been left open, as per Gandon’s arrangement with the footman.Dillon tipped the linkboy and, guided by the light left in the window specified for their entrance, they crossed the garden.Dillon’s sharp eye caught a movement inside the house.

‘Sh―someone’s moving in there.’

‘Oh _stuff_ , Jamy.Give’s leg up.’

But when they were inside, Gandon too grew uneasy―they heard a step echo from a passage where the servants had no cause to go at night, sensed the indefinable air of human presence.They moved circumspectly through the service portions of the house towards the family living quarters.Both young men had the unfortunate capacity to take drink well, so that the early, cautionary stages of intoxication entirely passed them by, and they made rather more noise in their vigilance than in sober heedlessness.

‘There’s two of them, Jim.Listen. Should we―’

‘No, proper flats we’d look if it all turns out innocent.And I don’t really want to answer questions about tonight, do you? Harmless as it was―’

‘Sh―there’s a light―’

‘Gentlemen!’

‘Oh, hell.’

‘ _Jesu. Christe_.’

Mr Gandon, in dressing gown and cap, hurried as down the passage towards them, shielding his candle, which cast a very scurvy light on the curious creature following him, who was wearing day clothes comprising a coat cut in the fashion of the beginning of his present Majesty’s reign and a most disreputable pair of boots hanging over scrawny ankles. He looked like he’d been drawn by Mr Bunbury: somehow greasy and horrent at once.

‘Good evening, sir,’ James offered hopefully.

‘And to you, Mr Dillon.’Gandon returned the bow with a straight look, and turned to his son.‘James, I will have words with you on the subject of _dissipation_ in the days to come.’

‘Yes, sir.’  

The absurdity of the situation broke upon the two Gandons at roughly the same time; the elder’s lips merely twitching, Jim snorting convulsively.Impassivity being a professional requirement turned habit for the other men, they stared stupidly at one another across a wide gulf of social station.

‘I had felt no cause to smile since―since. Perhaps we will forgo those words, James. And since you are here, Cocking―’ he indicated the Bunburyish servant, ‘has a―display? an _exhibition,_ of antiquarian interest, for us.’

*

It was a pitiful ceremony, James thought.How much the devotional lives of common people had been impoverished by the reformed faith!Though perhaps they had been doing this abject class of thing all along.

A four-days corpse is quite a nauseous thing: black at its extremities, waxy elsewhere; bloated, eyes and tongue bulging.When the deceased is fleshy it is worse. Used to cleanly disposals at sea, James found he was rather more susceptible to the smell than the landsmen; there was bile in his throat and his nose prickled. 

Cocking said, anxiously, ‘Which this is in the character of a demonstration.And the fulfillment of a promise. I don’t believe it no more, sir.It is wicked nonsense.’

‘Yes’, said old Gandon.‘We understand.’

Cocking set his candle at the corpse’s feet and old Gandon his at the head.Cocking took an oaten cake and a small packet of salt from one of his capacious pockets, and a bottle of ale from the other.He set the cake on Grose’s chest, and the bottle beside the candle at his head.He opened the paper packet and scattered a little salt over the body, and flung the remainder over his left shoulder.Then he said,

‘I give easement and rest to thee, dear man. Come not down our lanes or in our meadows.And for thy peace I pawn my own soul. Amen.’

He took the cake, broke it in two and stuffed one half into his mouth, letting the other half fall back on the corpse, reached for the bottle, uncorked it and took a draught.The noise of his chewing was loud―one sensed somehow that in ordinary life he was a tidy, silent eater, and this disgusting champing was part of the theatrics of the thing―and seemed to continue for many moments.Then he swallowed with a gulp, and it was over. Old Gandon’s face was running with tears, though that might well have been the stench. 

*

‘I am from Derbyshire.I am a bastard.My mother had an understanding, she believed, with a blacksmith, and they anticipated somewhat their marriage vows.Then he went and wedded another girl.Had my mother borne her humiliation with fortitude she would have had much sympathy from the people, but she did not, that was not her mould. She went to the church on their wedding day and cursed them as they came from the porch.It is believed by the folk that the curse of a wronged woman is a very powerful one.Then she tried to do away with the child inside her, and herself, but she lived. That is why, they said, I have a passing curious appearance.  

‘On the day I was born the blacksmith went home from his work at noon with an aching head, and by sunset he was dead.His wife followed him to the grave within the year.My mother was shunned, except, you understand, by men coming drunk from market days and such like.She was a drunkard too. She was kind when she was sober, fully six hours in every week. She was quite often with child, but rarely carried to term, and then the babies died.When I was old enough to walk to the village, I used to fetch her spirits, and when I was a little older still I began to take them myself.I might have gone thieving to maintain myself in gin, but I am very easily recognised, it would not answer.  

‘So I took to the sin-eating.It is by way of being a wandering life.In the course of it I met Captain Grose, and he was much interested in the provincial words I could tell him from my journeying.People spoke freely in my presence, as if I were not there, and I listened to many dialects of the common tongue.I have a very good memory, and it would be better still if I had not drank.The Captain treated me as a sensible man, and not a useful monster.He came upon me one day drawing with a stub of charcoal on a stone, and said I was prodigious talented for one who had no training.I asked him where I would get training, and he said with him, would I only drink beer and no more gin.And I said that if I could give up the sin-eating I would have no more need for gin.And he said, very well, but promise me if I should die before you, you will eat my sins.And I hesitated, for it seemed a devilish bargain.And he said, if you die first I will do as much for you.That sealed it.  

‘He taught me what he knew of draughtsmanship, and then put me to study with Mr Hooper, for all I was the oldest scholar ever to draw breath, I being then perhaps nearly thirty years of age.I learnt something of religion for the first time in my life.I did not take to it, but I discovered that the office I had done for ten years and more was the grossest of superstition, an imposition upon the simple-minded.The Captain and I went on midnight rambles, collecting words from the crews for his _Dictionary_.The crews are what they call themselves, the thieves, beggars and whores. There is a society among them.He would talk, and I would remember.I learned my letters, but remembering is better.I forget things when I write them down.I think that is all.  

‘No, there is one more thing.It is a touchy matter.There were things said of my relation to the Captain.They are not true.We shared many beds, and he did nothing of that sort.That is not the way I should have wished to end my account, but there it goes.A person cannot always end where he would wish. I have discharged my obligation and done my office.I no longer believe a man can pawn his soul, but he can give it freely in friendship, and that is the noblest thing on earth.’ 

*

1800

‘Well, if you fellows don’t mind another service story―I know you don’t, Gandon, you’ve always taken a bit of an interest in the sea―but they are tedious if one can’t follow, you know―well, this is rather a good one.Didn’t get much notice―man who told it me―Dundas, you know Dundas of the _Calpe_ ―said it was because Aubrey was carrying on with old Harte’s wife, and he sat on it out of pure spite, you know.I know a fellow’s wife is his wife, but Aubrey wasn’t the only man aboard―or on the _Sophie_!Anyway, damned gallant action―

―and they only lost one man, to speak of―well, I think a little fellow, a volunteer, first time at sea―dashed tragic, that―but anyway, yes, the lieutenant, you know, a sixth-rate like _Sophie_ only has one.Irishman―led a boarding party, shot in the chest―sounds rather a hothead, actually―but a loss to the service all the same―he’d quite distinguished himself commanding a hired cutter a couple of years back―can’t think why he hadn’t his step for that, but their Lordships are like as to the peace of God―John Dillon? No, James―James Dillon―why, Gandon, you’ve spilt your port, look at my damned breeches―’

*

To: Gemma <gfaubrey71@gmail.com>

From: C. O’Dowd <codowd.91@museum.ie>

Subject: box 89.023, Gandon collection

5th March 2014

Hi Gemma,

Sorry I took so long to get back to you.Mad busy, you know the way! I had a look intothose bits and pieces from the Gandon bequest for you: I think they’re actually slightly too early to be of interest.I’m attaching a couple of photos just in case.

So, what we’ve got is a mourning ring, silver gilt and enamel, from 1791, probably one of two dozen made for mourners at the funeral of Francis Grose.The Gandon connection is obvious, but I don’t think you can link your fellas to him, except in the sense that SM might have been in Dublin at the time, and given his antiquarian interests might have been present.But it’s not much to go on.

The other one does have a possible naval connection.It’s a portrait miniature of an unidentified young man, the cat. note says ‘in the dress of a naval lieutenant’ (I wouldn’t know, but am guessing you would!) watercolour on ivory, workshop of Horace Hone.Plain rose gold frame, typical of the early 1790s.On the back there's a handwritten note that reads ‘aetat. 21 / remember me’, and there’s a long braided lock of hair wound on the inside, I’d say the sitter’s, from the colour: very well-preserved. Even though I must have seen a thousand of the things, I’m always a bit spooked out by the ones with hair in them! He’s a bit of a lash, though, don’t you think?! Don’t think we can really make much of it either, but you might be able to connect it with something. 

Anyway, let me know if you want any more info.I’m going to be in London in June, we must catch up!

Best wishes,

Ciara

 

**Author's Note:**

> With the exception of the Aubrey/Maturin series characters, the unnamed interlocutor who is the bearer of the news of Dillon's death and the original characters Gemma and Ciara, all persons mentioned in this story really existed. I have, however, taken substantial liberties with their biographies.
> 
> James Gandon (1743-1823) was the architect of many of Dublin's most celebrated buildings: King's Inns, the Four Courts and the Custom House among others.
> 
> Francis Grose (c.1731-1791) was a lexicographer, topographer and antiquary, author of the _Antiquities of England and Wales_ (1772) and the _Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_ (1785), as well as numerous other works. He encouraged Burns to write 'Tam O'Shanter', first published in March 1791. When he died he was researching and writing _The Antiquities of Ireland_ (1797). This story has him implausibly well-informed about the Irish-language literary activity of Munster in the late 18th century, for which I make no apology whatever. Eoghan Rua Ó Súilleabháin (1748-82) wrote many masterly lyrics in Irish, and was perhaps the last of the great Gaelic poets, but he did indeed try to curry favour (and escape the Navy) with with a doggerel poem in English addressed to Admiral Rodney. 
> 
> Grose died at the house of the portraitist Horace Hone (1756-1825) (which was either on Dame or Dorset Street--I plumped for the former, as given by ODNB) on 12th May 1791. He seems to have collapsed shortly after his arrival for dinner; for drama, I have kept his demise until after the port. On 18th May he was buried in Drumcondra churchyard on the north side of Dublin city. Over 30 years later Gandon was buried, at his own request, in the same grave. I'm not sure if I have any opinion on whether or not Grose and Gandon were doing what the former, in his _Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_ called the 'blanket hornpipe', but the friendship was clearly close, and this story assumes the relationship to have been romantic.
> 
> Both men were widowed fairly young, and neither remarried. Grose had ten children and Gandon five. Grose's eldest son Francis was indeed officially governor of New South Wales in 1791, though in fact at the time of his father's death he was still in England, his taking up of the appointment having been delayed. 
> 
> Gandon seems to have left his wife Eleanor in London when he moved to Dublin in the early 1780s, taking his younger children, James, Eleanor and Elizabeth, with him. Eleanor died c.1790. The circumstance of their separation seems to have struck Gandon's son James as sufficiently odd for him to falsify the date of his mother's death in his biography of his father.
> 
> James Gandon the younger (1772-1851) never took up a profession. He did supply some drawings for the posthumous volumes of Grose's _Antiquities_ , and is recorded helping to improve his father's estate in Lucan in the 1810s and 1820s. He seems to have married late in life, and had two sons, Henry and James.
> 
> Francis Grose really did have an assistant called Thomas Cocking (fl.1783-1791), and they did go on midnight cant-collecting rambles together. Everything else about him in this story is invented, including his appearance. Henry Bunbury (1750-1811) was a cartoonist and illustrator. To my mind's eye, Cocking actually looks more like a Bunbury than something drawn by his better-known contemporaries Gillray or Rowlandson, but I must confess the anachronistic reference to _The Importance of Being Earnest_ was hard to resist.
> 
> There is little of the Navy in this, for which my apologies. James Dillon's early service on the _Leopard_ is rather by way of being a pleasantry regarding that unprepossessing vessel than anything remotely plausible.
> 
> I tried to resist larding this story with tidbits from Grose's _Dictionary_ : it may help, however, to know that 'Eve's Custom House' is a term therein for what Grose calls 'the monosyllable', i.e. where Adam first entered. Adam and Eve's is the colloquial name for the Franciscan friary church on Merchant's Quay, perhaps a mile and a half west of Gandon's Custom House (as a Munsterman, James is naturally inclined to allow there may be prettier Custom Houses to the _west_ ); by 1791 Catholic practice was open and tolerated, but the church has its nickname from more draconian times, when the friars would hold covert masses in the Adam and Eve tavern on Merchant's Quay.
> 
> My information on sin-eating is garnered from the relevant entry in _Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_ , Bertram Puckle's [Funeral Customs](http://www.sacred-texts.com/etc/fcod/fcod07.htm) (1926), and [this source.](http://www.shropshiregallery.co.uk/towns/ratlinghope/ratlinghope.html)


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